Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

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Jazerus: May 24, 2011

MoR is not good for fanfic unless your definition is percentage-based. Is it in the top 1%? Probably. Among fanfics that aren't word salad generated by teenagers, i.e. the ones that people actually read? It's bottom-tier poo poo.

# ? Dec 27, 2015 05:47

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# ? May 17, 2024 19:40

GottaPayDaTrollToll: Dec 3, 2009; by Lowtax

Jazerus posted:

MoR is not good for fanfic unless your definition is percentage-based. Is it in the top 1%? Probably. Among fanfics that aren't word salad generated by teenagers, i.e. the ones that people actually read? It's bottom-tier poo poo.

I'm genuinely curious as to what works of fanfiction you would consider not "bottom tier poo poo".

# ? Dec 27, 2015 06:16

Curvature of Earth: Sep 9, 2011; Projected cost of
invading Canada:
$900

GottaPayDaTrollToll posted:

I'm genuinely curious as to what works of fanfiction you would consider not "bottom tier poo poo".

The Midrash. All those stories about Abraham smashing idols and Moses chewing hot coal as a child? Straight-up fanfic written by rabbis to expand on and explain details from the Torah. A vital part of Jewish theology, written across centuries by dozens of rabbis, many of whom never met each other, often building or commenting on each other's stories. It's fanfiction.

(On a more personal note, I have a fic up that I consider "not bottom tier poo poo", but it's waaaay off-topic for this thread, because it's for Naruto, not Harry Potter.)

# ? Dec 27, 2015 06:36

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

GottaPayDaTrollToll posted:

I'm genuinely curious as to what works of fanfiction you would consider not "bottom tier poo poo".

I wrote a list earlier in thread of Harry Potter fanfic.

Here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3702281&userid=186847#post452483874

# ? Dec 27, 2015 10:27

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

GottaPayDaTrollToll posted:

I'm genuinely curious as to what works of fanfiction you would consider not "bottom tier poo poo".

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7583739/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Most-Electrifying-Man

# ? Dec 27, 2015 10:35

HIJK: Nov 25, 2012; in the room where you sleep

GottaPayDaTrollToll posted:

I'm genuinely curious as to what works of fanfiction you would consider not "bottom tier poo poo".

To move away from Harry Potter for a bit, there's a stellar Portal fanfiction called Blue Sky that is top-tier: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7434133/1/Blue-Sky I recommend it to everyone when they ask me about fanfic.

# ? Dec 27, 2015 13:11

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

GottaPayDaTrollToll posted:

I'm genuinely curious as to what works of fanfiction you would consider not "bottom tier poo poo".

Well, I have already recommended The Arithmancer but it's worth doing again.

Harry Potter and the Natural 20 is a lot of fun if you've played D&D.

Oh God, Not Again! is a comedy where Harry's sent back in time to the beginning of the series and decides to short-circuit the plot. This is a common premise for serious fics, most of which are dreck, but this pulls it off really well as a comedy. If you like this story, A Black Comedy might be a good followup. It's in the same vein if a bit more of a parody of fanfiction cliches rather than the books.

Opinions vary on The Merging but I like it and it's very well-written.

Dan Granger is a story I haven't read in a while but I remember being very good. Hermione's parents' dental practice is attacked by the Death Eaters, and this leads Hermione's father to take a much more active interest in the war against Voldemort.

Out of The Iron Rose's list, I would strongly recommend Applied Cultural Anthropology and Forging the Sword. There are a lot of stories better than MoR but these are some of the standouts.

Oh, and outside of HP, The Game of Champions is Pokemon narrated in Kingkiller Chronicle style, except Red is actually a cool main character instead of a useless jackass like Kvothe. The world-building and attention to detail here are superb. Traveler sticks more closely to the games and anime but is also really good. I'm pretty sure that literally every other Pokemon fic is way below MoR-tier bad but these two are excellent.

I thought Ned Stark Lives! had a better plot than GRRM's actual books if I remember correctly but I haven't read it in a long time.

Jazerus fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Dec 28, 2015

# ? Dec 27, 2015 17:08

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

GottaPayDaTrollToll posted:

I'm genuinely curious as to what works of fanfiction you would consider not "bottom tier poo poo".

If you're into the Vorkosigan Saga, Aral Vorkosigan's Dog is a retelling of Shards Of Honor entirely from Simon Illyan's viewpoint, and much of the AO3 Vorkosigan section is actually surprisingly good, rarely dipping below "ehh ok" - pick favourite authors.

For Worm, as I've noted, start at Cenotaph. Part 2, Wake, is even better.

A Study In Emerald is Sherlock Holmes x Cthulhu, but it's by Neil Gaiman so it's proper literature (even though I think even he's acknowledged it's really a crossover fanfic).

# ? Dec 27, 2015 17:49

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

Death Bot posted:

"it's pretty good for a fanfic. the author only mentions rape for one excruciatingly long scene, and i don't think it comes up again in their other work, at least not as far as i've seen"

Ah but it does.

# ? Dec 27, 2015 18:07

my dad: Oct 17, 2012; this shall be humorous

Jazerus posted:

Oh God, Not Again!

Reading and laughing my rear end off. Also, being creeped out by the suggestions being thrown at the author. Yuck.

# ? Dec 27, 2015 18:17

Curvature of Earth: Sep 9, 2011; Projected cost of
invading Canada:
$900

HIJK posted:

To move away from Harry Potter for a bit, there's a stellar Portal fanfiction called Blue Sky that is top-tier: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7434133/1/Blue-Sky I recommend it to everyone when they ask me about fanfic.

Jazerus posted:

Oh, and outside of HP, The Game of Champions is Pokemon narrated in Kingkiller Chronicle style, except Red is actually a cool main character instead of a useless jackass like Kvothe. The world-building and attention to detail here are superb. Traveler sticks more closely to the games and anime but is also really good. I'm pretty sure that literally every other Pokemon fic is way below MoR-tier bad but these two are excellent.

I thought Ned Stark Lives! had a better plot than GRRM's actual books if I remember correctly but I haven't read it in a long time.

divabot posted:

If you're into the Vorkosigan Saga, Aral Vorkosigan's Dog is a retelling of Shards Of Honor entirely from Simon Illyan's viewpoint, and much of the AO3 Vorkosigan section is actually surprisingly good, rarely dipping below "ehh ok" - pick favourite authors.

For Worm, as I've noted, start at Cenotaph. Part 2, Wake, is even better.

A Study In Emerald is Sherlock Holmes x Cthulhu, but it's by Neil Gaiman so it's proper literature (even though I think even he's acknowledged it's really a crossover fanfic).

Well I guess the field is wide open for non-Harry Potter fics now, so I'll reveal my sad weeaboo status and recommend Naruto fanfics:

White Rain: Itachi had two illegitimate children before dying. Now they get to attempt to live up to his legacy, while dealing with their mother's own dark, secretive legacy, while their uncle Sasuke hates them for being a living reminder of everything he lost. It's finished, and the author's now working on getting their first original work properly published.

Dance the silence down to morning: "Obito is used to being no good. He�s used to trying and failing and trying again, progressing by inches while everyone around him is bounding forward. He�s thirteen, hardly an Uchiha at all, too weak, too clumsy, too bad at jutsus. But now there's something in his head, something filled with hurt and tempered rage, and the most chilling part is that it�s him."

A Different World: Yes I'm recommending my own fic. This is my attempt at reconstructing Naruto from the ground-up by rejecting the lovely parts of canon (which is most of it at this point�seriously, by the end of the series Kishimoto was spitting out worse ideas than a lot of fanfic writers, and executing them about as competently*) and all the lovely ideas inexplicably popular with the fandom (which is most of them). Worldbuilding is given more than thirty seconds of thought and female characters actually goddamn matter.

I might as well pitch a Legend of Zelda fic while I'm at it: Zelda Don't Be Racist. Princess Zelda gets sent off to live with the Gerudo for "cultural education" after making some astonishingly racist judgments about Gandondorf. There is comedy, but of the culture clash variety; it's otherwise a serious attempt to grapple with the Zelda series treating Gandondorf and the Gerudo as racist caricatures (e.g. "These dark-skinned people from the desert are evil because reasons. Please ignore their legitimate grievances.").

*For the final battle, Tobi, who'd been claiming to be the legendary Madara, is revealed to be... Kakashi's supposedly-dead ex-teammate Obito. And he's the final villain! Wait no, Black Zetsu turned out to be an agent of Madara and forced Obito to resurrect Madara, who is the actual final villain! Wait, no, Black Zetsu was merely pretending to serve Madara, and is actually an agent of... a powerful space alien neither the audience nor the characters in-story have ever heard of, who takes over Madara's body and is the true final villain! I am not kidding, this is all canon.

Curvature of Earth fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Dec 27, 2015

# ? Dec 27, 2015 19:22

Tiggum: Oct 24, 2007; Your life and your quest end here.

Jazerus posted:

Oh God, Not Again! is a comedy where Harry's sent back in time to the beginning of the series and decides to short-circuit the plot. This is a common premise for serious fics, most of which are dreck, but this pulls it off really well as a comedy.

Is this ongoing or complete? If ongoing, is it still being updated or does it look like it's been abandoned?

# ? Dec 28, 2015 01:59

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Tiggum posted:

Is this ongoing or complete? If ongoing, is it still being updated or does it look like it's been abandoned?

Complete.

# ? Dec 28, 2015 02:50

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

Tiggum posted:

Is this ongoing or complete? If ongoing, is it still being updated or does it look like it's been abandoned?

Most of the stories in that post are still being actively written, but both of the HP comedy fics have been complete for years.

# ? Dec 28, 2015 03:11

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

DISREGARD

JosephWongKS fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Dec 30, 2015

# ? Dec 28, 2015 04:44

Seraphic Neoman: Jul 19, 2011

*bonghit*

word up man

# ? Dec 28, 2015 06:12

Fajita Queen: Jun 21, 2012

If we're going no holds barred with the fanfic discussion, I'm gonna recommend Inter Nos, which is essentially Roman historical fiction with a thin veneer of anime lesbians covering it to attract a wider audience. The protagonists are from Mai Hime but really it covers like a dozen major works just in the primary cast and has a lot of minor characters from anything and everything you can think of. It's very good but can be dense at times, particularly during the parts where large-scale battle or preparations for said battles are not happening in the forefront, and is obscenely long at just over a million words and not yet finished. Senatorial politicking is absolutely the best part of the story, and a lot of the characters have been adapted well for what it is. I'm probably not great at selling it, but I can confidently say it's one of the most well-written pieces of fiction I've read in my life, and I'm a very prolific reader.

It also does the Worm thing where the protagonist will be doing some insanely hosed up poo poo that is described totally normally from their perspective, because they are insane.

Fajita Queen fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Dec 28, 2015

# ? Dec 28, 2015 06:13

devildragon777: May 17, 2014; They'd be a lot more scary if they were more than an inch tall each.

Err, maybe I'm missing something, but where did this rock come from?

# ? Dec 28, 2015 09:04

NachtSieger: Apr 10, 2013

Curvature of Earth posted:

I might as well pitch a Legend of Zelda fic while I'm at it: Zelda Don't Be Racist. Princess Zelda gets sent off to live with the Gerudo for "cultural education" after making some astonishingly racist judgments about Gandondorf. There is comedy, but of the culture clash variety; it's otherwise a serious attempt to grapple with the Zelda series treating Gandondorf and the Gerudo as racist caricatures (e.g. "These dark-skinned people from the desert are evil because reasons. Please ignore their legitimate grievances.").

Part two is the perfect cap to the entirely humorous but still serious part one by flipping the entire thing on its head into one long (short) comedy.

# ? Dec 28, 2015 10:13

Hyper Crab Tank: Feb 10, 2014; The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation

JosephWongKS posted:

Chapter 17 � Locating the HypothesisPart Nineteen

Uh, you skipped a big chunk of chapter there. As dumbfounding as the rock is, it's even more so if you skip the part where Dumbledore talks about it.

# ? Dec 28, 2015 11:45

cultureulterior: Jan 27, 2004

The nice part is that once you've read the whole thing, everything Dumbledore says here makes perfect sense, from his point of view.

# ? Dec 28, 2015 13:25

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

If you managed to read the whole thing, you're way past "sense".

# ? Dec 28, 2015 13:38

Soylent Pudding: Jun 22, 2007; We've got people!

The first time I read this bit with the rock I assumed Dumbledore was using his status as inscrutable old wizard to troll the gently caress out of Eliezarry.

# ? Dec 28, 2015 18:31

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Turns out I did skip over a part before that. Will be posting the complete version shortly.

# ? Dec 30, 2015 03:26

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 17 � Locating the Hypothesis
Part Nineteen

quote:

"I'm afraid not," said Dumbledore, smiling again. "I was born seventy years before that book was published, dear child. But it seems that my Muggleborn students tend to think alike in certain ways. I have accumulated no fewer than twenty copies of The Lord of the Rings and three sets of Tolkien's entire collected works, and I treasure every one of them." Dumbledore drew his wand and held it up and struck a pose. "You cannot pass! How does that look?"

Looks like blatant insertion of pop culture references to increase the popularity of your work.

quote:

"Ah," Harry said in something approaching complete brain shutdown, "I think you're missing a Balrog." And the pink pyjamas and squashed mushroom hat were not helping in the slightest.

"I see." Dumbledore sighed and glumly sheathed the wand in his belt. "I fear there have been precious few Balrogs in my life of late. Nowadays it's all meetings of the Wizengamot where I must try desperately to prevent any work from getting done, and formal dinners where foreign politicians compete to see who can be the most obstinate fool. And being mysterious at people, knowing things I have no way of knowing, making cryptic statements which can only be understood in hindsight, and all the other small ways in which powerful wizards amuse themselves after they have left the part of the pattern that allows them to be heroes.

To be fair to Dumbledore, if I was a powerful wizard who was somehow forced by circumstances to be stuck spending most of his time on administrative and bureaucratic work, I�d probably also amuse myself by being a cryptic rear end in a top hat to other people.

quote:

Speaking of which, Harry, I have a certain something to give you, something which belonged to your father."

"You do?" said Harry. "Gosh, who would have figured."

"Yes indeed," said Dumbledore. "I suppose it is a little predictable, isn't it?" His face turned solemn. "Nonetheless..."

Dumbledore went back to his desk and sat down, pulling out one of the drawers as he did so. He reached in using both arms, and, straining slightly, pulled a rather large and heavy-looking object out of the drawer, which he then deposited on his oaken desk with a huge thunk.

"This," Dumbledore said, "was your father's rock."

Harry stared at it. It was light gray, discolored, irregularly shaped, sharp-edged, and very much a plain old ordinary large rock. Dumbledore had deposited it so that it rested on the widest available cross-section, but it still wobbled unstably on his desk.

Harry looked up. "This is a joke, right?"

"It is not," said Dumbledore, shaking his head and looking very serious. "I took this from the ruins of James and Lily's home in Godric's Hollow, where also I found you; and I have kept it from then until now, against the day when I could give it to you."

In the mixture of hypotheses that served as Harry's model of the world, Dumbledore's insanity was rapidly rising in probability. But there was still a substantial amount of probability allocated to other alternatives...

"Um, is it a magical rock?"

That�d be my first question too.

quote:

"Not so far as I know," said Dumbledore. "But I advise you with the greatest possible stringency to keep it close about your person at all times."

All right. Dumbledore was probably insane but if he wasn't... well, it would be just too embarrassing to get in trouble from ignoring the advice of the inscrutable old wizard. That had to be like #4 on the list of the Top 100 Obvious Failure Modes.

Harry stepped forward and put his hands on the rock, trying to find some angle from which to lift it without cutting himself. "I'll put it in my pouch, then."

Dumbledore frowned. "That may not be close enough to your person. And what if your mokeskin pouch is lost, or stolen?"

"You think I should just carry a big rock everywhere I go?"

Dumbledore gave Harry a serious look. "That might prove wise."

"Ah..." Harry said. It looked rather heavy. "I'd think the other students would tend to ask me questions about that."

Why is Eliezarry suddenly concerned about his fellow students� opinions? Hasn�t it been shown that he�s consistently acted eccentrically around them and that they are already used to him being eccentric?

quote:

"Tell them I ordered you to do it," said Dumbledore. "No one will question that, since they all think I'm insane." His face was still perfectly serious.

"Er, to be honest if you go around ordering your students to carry large rocks I can kind of see why people would think that."

"Ah, Harry," said Dumbledore. The old wizard gestured, a sweep of one hand that seemed to take in all the mysterious instruments around the room. "When we are young we believe that we know everything, and so we believe that if we see no explanation for something, then no explanation exists. When we are older we realise that the whole universe works by a rhythm and a reason, even if we ourselves do not know it. It is only our own ignorance which appears to us as insanity."

"Reality is always lawful," said Harry, "even if we don't know the law."

"Precisely, Harry," said Dumbledore. "To understand this - and I see that you do understand it - is the essence of wisdom."

"So... why do I have to carry this rock exactly?"

"I can't think of a reason, actually," said Dumbledore.

"...you can't."

Dumbledore nodded. "But just because I can't think of a reason doesn't mean there is no reason."

The instruments ticked on.

I�d be dumbfounded too, to be fair.

# ? Dec 30, 2015 03:32

Seraphic Neoman: Jul 19, 2011

Okay I get what he's going for but no.
This is not working on any level.

# ? Dec 30, 2015 05:07

Telarra: Oct 9, 2012

Does Dumbledore's voice just sound really off to anyone else?

# ? Dec 30, 2015 10:07

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

I must admit, EY did make this bit - getting Harry to seriously exercise his power to maintain a transfiguration - eventually pay off.

# ? Dec 30, 2015 13:05

Zonekeeper: Oct 27, 2007

Moddington posted:

Does Dumbledore's voice just sound really off to anyone else?

100% agreed. While he doesn't do anything particularly UnDumbledoreish (hell, the Tolkien namedrop would be completely in character for him), there's something about the way he speaks that is way off.

# ? Dec 30, 2015 13:30

HIJK: Nov 25, 2012; in the room where you sleep

Zonekeeper posted:

100% agreed. While he doesn't do anything particularly UnDumbledoreish (hell, the Tolkien namedrop would be completely in character for him), there's something about the way he speaks that is way off.

I think it's the way that he's constantly winking-and-nodding at Eliezarry. The writing is so busy trying to be clever that it's not investing the cleverness with meaning or purpose. It's just being clever.

It may be set up for later on, I don't know, but even Rowling's wacky Dumbledore had purpose behind everything he did and when he talked about deep subjects he always took it seriously. Sometimes he downplayed the importance of certain things so that he could protect the students' innocence a bit longer (like when he reassures Ginny that "much older and wiser wizards have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort" in Chamber of Secrets instead of worrying her further) but he was still very aware of what was going on around him.

This dialogue is just lol-random and it doesn't understand the purpose behind the wacky hijinks persona that Dumbledore put on.

# ? Dec 30, 2015 13:59

Hyper Crab Tank: Feb 10, 2014; The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation

HIJK posted:

This dialogue is just lol-random and it doesn't understand the purpose behind the wacky hijinks persona that Dumbledore put on.

I never really saw Dumbledore's hijinks as particuarly wacky to begin with... nowhere near what Yudkowsky makes of it. I think that's part of why it's so off-putting, it's playing up something that was much better balanced with actual smartness in the original work, while ignoring the latter to a greater degree, exacerbating the issue.

# ? Dec 30, 2015 14:08

MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

Dumbledore was a lot more random in the first two books ("Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"), which I expect is why he is here.

# ? Dec 30, 2015 14:25

Hyper Crab Tank: Feb 10, 2014; The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation

Even when Dumbledore is reciting random nonsense words Rowling does it better than Yudkowsky.

# ? Dec 30, 2015 16:39

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

Even when Dumbledore is reciting random nonsense words Rowling does it better than Yudkowsky.

Well, Rowling being a much more competent writer is something with which I think Yudkowsky will readily agree... at least in public :haw:

# ? Dec 31, 2015 00:05

Death Bot: Mar 4, 2007; Binary killing machines, turning 1 into 0 since 0011000100111001 0011011100110110

In the books he had other poo poo going on and knew more than the reader or the protagonist, but was there with the sage advice when needed. In this, he's being a weird dick but also read lotr. This is what the author thinks incredibly smart people are like: needlessly cryptic and read the same books as him.

# ? Dec 31, 2015 00:12

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 17 � Locating the Hypothesis
Part Twenty

quote:

"Okay," said Harry, "I'm not even sure if I should be saying this, but that is simply not the correct way to deal with our admitted ignorance of how the universe works."

"It isn't?" said the old wizard, looking surprised and disappointed.

Here it comes. I can feel it coming.

quote:

Harry had the feeling this conversation was not going to work out in his favour, but he carried on regardless. "No. I don't even know if that fallacy has an official name, but if I had to make one up myself, it would be 'privileging the hypothesis' or something like that. How can I put this formally... um... suppose you had a million boxes, and only one of the boxes contained a diamond. And you had a box full of diamond-detectors, and each diamond-detector always went off in the presence of a diamond, and went off half the time on boxes that didn't have a diamond. If you ran twenty detectors over all the boxes, you'd have, on average, one false candidate and one true candidate left. And then it would just take one or two more detectors before you were left with the one true candidate. The point being that when there are lots of possible answers, most of the evidence you need goes into just locating the true hypothesis out of millions of possibilities - bringing it to your attention in the first place. The amount of evidence you need to judge between two or three plausible candidates is much smaller by comparison. So if you just jump ahead without evidence and promote one particular possibility to the focus of your attention, you're skipping over most of the work. Like, you live in a city where there are a million people, and there's a murder, and a detective says, well, we've got no evidence at all, so have we considered the possibility that Mortimer Snodgrass did it?"

"Did he?" said Dumbledore.

"No," said Harry. "But later it turns out that the murderer had black hair, and Mortimer has black hair, so everyone's like, ah, looks like Mortimer did it after all. So it's unfair to Mortimer for the police to promote him to their attention without having good reasons already in hand to suspect him. When there are lots of possibilities, most of the work goes into just locating the true answer - starting to pay attention to it. You don't need proof, or the sort of official evidence that scientists or courts demand, but you need some sort of hint, and that hint has to discriminate that particular possibility from the millions of others. Otherwise you can't just pluck the right answer out of thin air. You can't even pluck a possibility worth thinking about out of thin air. And there's got to be a million other things I could do besides carrying around my father's rock. Just because I'm ignorant about the universe doesn't mean that I'm unsure about how I should reason in the presence of my uncertainty. The laws for thinking with probabilities are no less iron than the laws that govern old-fashioned logic, and what you just did is not allowed." Harry paused. "Unless, of course, you have some hint you're not mentioning."

Yup, there it is. �Eliezer�s mouth-piece mode �, go!

Also, is he seriously comparing �carrying a rock� to �potential miscarriage of justice�?

quote:

"Ah," said Dumbledore. He tapped his cheek, looking thoughtful. "An interesting argument, certainly, but doesn't it break down at the point where you make an analogy between a million potential murderers only one of whom committed the murder, and taking one out of many possible courses of action, when many possible courses of action may all be wise? I do not say that carrying your father's rock is the one best possible course of action, only that it is wiser to do than not."

Okay, at least Dumbledore did address the hyperbole of Eliezarry�s analogy.

# ? Jan 4, 2016 07:19

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

MikeJF posted:

Dumbledore was a lot more random in the first two books ("Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"), which I expect is why he is here.

That's not random, though: he outright stated he's gonna say a couple of words. That's the wonderful thing about the character, he's very logical in his own way. Here he just seems odd for odd's sake.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 14:14

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

anilEhilated posted:

That's not random, though: he outright stated he's gonna say a couple of words.

He stated the exact same thing in HPMor, as well, just following it with different words ("Happy happy boom boom swamp swamp swamp", which I assumed must have been another lame pop culture reference - they weren't, but they are now.)

But! Actually, you ignorant simpleton, Dumbledore was making an important point about the divisions that have just been made and the identities these students are about to take on. Shame on Eliezer for failing to capture such basic subtext, tsk tsk tsk. Tsk.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 22:39

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

NihilCredo posted:

But! Actually, you ignorant simpleton, Dumbledore was making an important point about the divisions that have just been made and the identities these students are about to take on.

quote:

As a good postmodern linguistics professor, Dumbledore notes that the Sorting Hat is the vehicle of the metanarrative or Grand Myth that is the *real* evil of their world and throws out his comic marker for those capable of hearing what was not very well hidden in his short speech.

My brain hurts.

# ? Jan 5, 2016 23:49

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# ? May 17, 2024 19:40

Hyper Crab Tank: Feb 10, 2014; The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation

The difference is Rowling follows it with words that are uncommon and fanciful, which suggests a deeper intelligence and rich vocabulary of Dumbledore, in addition to his quirkiness.

Yudkowsky uses basic words (most of which are mono-syllabic) repeated in a weird off-putting cadence, making Dumbledore sound mentally retarded, or possibly five years old.

# ? Jan 6, 2016 01:03

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

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